wsume99

I'm guessing that you have 10/100 mbps router like I do. My recommendation would be to purchase a gigabit switch. Here is the one I use on my network: D-Link DGS-2208 10/100/1000Mbps 8-Port Desktop Green Ethernet Switch The bad news is that I think it had a $10 off promo code last week but now it's gone. There is also a 5-port version but it's only $5 cheaper so I'd go with the 8-port one. You can use any gigabit switch you want. Hook all your machines with gigabit NICs (not just your desktop and server) to the gigabit switch. Really you can hook all your equipment to the new switch it'll automatically detect the fastest protoco to use for the device. Then all you need is an ethernet cable between the switch and the router so you can connect to the internet. That's it.

I suppose but I'm pretty sure that what I heard was all three disks spin up in rapid succession (like within a second of each other) and then back down. This repeated over and over at a frequency of approx. once a minute, which is how often the sleep script polls the drives using hdparm. I'm certain that it was not just a single disk spinning up and then down. The three disks are all WDs (WD10EARS, WD1001FALS, & WD1600AAJS). The two 1TB drives are new (~2 months old) and the 160GB drive is about 18 months old. I've never updated the FW on any of the drives. So based on the assortment of drives I have and the fact that all of them were acting this way I doubt it is buggy FW. I have an old IBM Deskstar drive that I can put in the server maybe I'll try that drive as well to see how it responds.

I too have read that report and was considering turning down my case fans. I have an Antec 300 case with the standard fans (rear and upper) all set on high. My server is in my basement which is not heated and I live in Ohio, so I expect them to drop a little as the outside temps go down. My drive temps are (idle - load/parity): Parity (WD20EARS): 26°C - 30°C Data 1 (WD10EARS): 26°C - 30°C Data 2 (WD1001FALS): 27°C - 31°C I've been considering adding a fan controller but before doing that I think that I'll try the fans on low to see how the tems are. I know that the article says the ideal temps are 36-47°C but I'm thinking that I want to be under 40°C. Maybe 35-40°C is the sweet spot.

Ok let's take this one step at a time. A parity-protected, non-cache enabled unRAID server is usually capable of the following sustained transfer speeds on a Gigabit (1000 mbps) network: Write: 25-35 MB/sec Read: 45-70 MB/sec With a cache disk installed in your server your performance would be even better. On a Gigabit network you would basically be limited by the speed of the cache drive (assuming you are using a HDD and not a SDD). Ethernet transfer speeds are as follows: Fast ethernet (100 mbps): 12.5 MB/sec Gigabit ethernet (1000 mbps): 125 MB/sec So I can't specifically answer whether or not you'll get 100 MB/sec with a better router. But I can tell you that you will never see anything above 12.5 MB/sec if you're using a fast ethernet (10/100) device on your network. In order to get the most out of your server you need Gigabit NICs in the server and the client (aka your desktop) and all the routers/switches/hubs that interconnect them must be capable of Gigabit ethernet speeds as well.

Thank you papnikol for the reply. Here are the drive assignements: sda = parity drive sdb = data drive 1 sdc = data drive 2 sdd = new disk being precleared sde = flash disk Before I added the new 2TB drive to my array my sleep scrip looked like this... drives="/dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc" I forgot to add "/dev/sdd" into that line of the script and the server actually entered s3 sleep during my first attempted preclear. Whoops. So I added "/dev/sdd" and that corrected the problem. However now I have this strange spinning up the immediately back down problem. I do not know shell scripting well either that's why I am asking for help. I believe that something in my script is causing this problem. I believe that my script polls all of these drives once a minute using the hdparm command to ascertain drive status. My suspicion was that executing the hdparm command on a spun down/sleeping drive caused the drive to temporarily spin up to report its status. Now the code you posted appears to only poll drives that are awake (i.e. not spun down) so this might actually fix my issue - at least it will test my theory. I also believe that this problem would not just occur when executing a preclear on a drive but whenever a drive is spun down, which could happen in a lot of situations. I just happend to discover it when I was preclearing a drive. I'll try this new code out tonight to see if it works. The funny thing is that I used the s3 script that was documented on the Setup Sleep (S3) and Wake on Lan (WOL) wiki page. All I did was update the drive assignments in the script as the directions indicated. So I would suspect that anyone else who used that script would have the same issues I do. The script works (i.e. puts the server to sleep and wakes it up) but it seems to cause this unusual behavior of spinning up sleeping drives which I consider to be a very bad side-effect. Most users would probably not even notice this issue because it is hard to hear the drives spinning up and down over case fans. I had to turn my fans to low and remove the side panel off my case (Antec 300) before I could be sure I knew what I was hearing was in fact the drives spinning up then back down again.

Yes. However I believe that you need to update the firmware to achieve good performance in unRAID. I think the firmware update converts the drive from 4k sectors (advanced format) to regular 512 byte sectors. Search around the forums and you should find more info about how to update the firmware. I have read a few posts where people have had difficulty updating the firmware. The easiest advanced format drive to use are WD EARS drives (I have 2 of them myself). To disable the 4k sectors you just install a jumper on pins 7-8 and you're good to go.

I've never had a WD Green drive with that slow of a read rate. I don't think that running 4 drives at a time would cause this. Is this a WD EARS drive? If so, did you put the jumper on pins 7 & 8?

Looks like you've got 4 good disks there.

Looks like someone has built a system using that same MB and CPU. You can read about it here. Many other users have that Sempron CPU as well, myself included. Bottom line - that MB and CPU should be fine. I didn't check the QVL for that RAM but I'm betting that it'll be fine also. I've seen a lot of other people use a single 2GB stick though.

^^Not sure I understand why that applies to my problem. I have previously observed what you mentioned when the server was preparing to sleep. If all drives were spun down then just before the server would enter s3 then all drives would spin up and then the machine would go to sleep. However under the observed condition my server should not be preparing to enter S3 sleep. There are 4 drives connected, sda, sdb, sdc, & sdd. You can see these are all listed in my s3 script. #!/bin/bash drives="/dev/sda /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd" timeout=5 count=5 while [ 1 ] do hdparm -C $drives | grep -q active if [ $? -eq 1 ] then count=$[$count-1] else count=$timeout fi if [ $count -le 0 ] then # Do pre-sleep activities sleep 5 # Go to sleep echo 3 > /proc/acpi/sleep # Do post-sleep activities # Force NIC into gigabit mode # (might be needed forgets about gigabit when it wakes up) ethtool -s eth0 speed 1000 # Force a DHCP renewal (shouldn't be used for static-ip boxes) /sbin/dhcpcd -n sleep 5 count=$timeout fi # Wait a minute echo COUNT $count sleep 60 done When I observed this condition I was preclearing sdd and the other drives were all spun down. The script queries all "drives" using the hdparm command and if at least one is active then it would not prepare to enter sleep. (Note: I did not write this script so I really don't completely understand it). So it appears to me that just performing a hdparm causes the drive to spinup just to report its status and then back down after it has replied. Does this make sense?

I'm preclearing a new 2TB drive and just happened to noticed the power draw on my new kill-a-watt meter fluctuating a lot - like between 80 and 100 watts. I listened to my server and heard a lot of fan noise and a faint sound that sounded like the disks spinning up and down cyclically. After turning my case fans all to low I could hear it very well and it was the disks spinning up and down. I'm only running the basic version now so I only have 3 disks. What I heard was all three disks (which showed they were spun down) spinning up for just a few seconds and then back down. This process repeated at a constant frequency of about once every minute. My immediate thought was that something in the sleep script, which runs hdparm every minute on all the disks, must be doing something here. As a test I removed the initialization of my sleep script from the go file. Rebooted, spun down all disks and I did not observe this repetitive spinning up and down like before. So now I'm wondering if this is normal or do I have something messed up in my sleep script or go file? As I said, I'm preclearing a new 2TB drive so the last thing I want is for my three disks to be spinning up and down every minute for the next ~30 hours. I've attached copies of my sleep (s3) and go files. go.txt s3.txt

No, the preclear results are saved in your syslog file (along with other important system info). If you are running unRAID 4.5 or later you can access it at //tower/log/syslog. Of course you'll need to put in a different name for //tower if you changed it from the default. If you install unMenu it makes your life a little easier. There is a page built in which pulls up your syslog and a feature that downloads the entire log as a text file.

^^Ditto that. However I always feel like a total douche whenever I give someone my e-mail and it's @aol.com

Your serial numbers looked odd because they ended with 5678-901234567890 The numbers are all in sequence. Those weren't my serial numbers but now I see what you are talking about. I'll take a look at mine once I get a chance. I did look at it once before and I don't remember it follwing any patterns. IIRC they looked very similar to the ones queeg posted earlier (probably because mine are Kingston devices as well).

It does however my server is currently down due to a failed MB. My new MB is due to be delivered today. I'll post it later today once I get back up and running. I also have a second USB reader that is identical to the one I'm currently using now. I'll check that one as well to see if the GUIDs are the same. Question - I'll be looking to buy a pro version of unRAID in a few weeks so do any of you guys know if Tom will accept the GUID from a SD card reader. Based on the following comment I assumed that Tom might not accept a GUID from a flash card reader. I guess he's concerned that two different readers could have the same GUID which would allow someone to use a single license on more than one server. This seems to vary by product with some being the same and others unique. However because of the uncertainty I just assumed that Tom would not grant a license to me using a microSD card reader GUID. Any thoughts?

Thanks bubbaQ, I'll give it a look once I get my new MB installed.

This thread peaked my interest so I dug out a microSD reader that I got free as part of a combo deal on Newegg over a year ago to give this a try. My model is: Kingston 4GB Micro SDHC Flash Card w/ USB Reader Model FCR-MRB+SDC4/4GB I have the basic version running on it right now (which it sounds like is all they are really good for). The only difference I've noticed is that it takes a lot more time to load the unRAID image file so my boot times are about 2-3x longer as compared to my Sandisk Cruzer USB thumbdrive.

I second that request

How about ... I Am Legend (2007) Saving Private Ryan (1998) The Hunt for Red October (1990) The Longest Day (1962) Cool Hand Luke (1967) Not movies but damn good mini-series ... Band of Brothers (2001) The Pacific (2010) (when it's released)

My unRAID is currently in an Antec 300 case. I only have fans installed in the rear and top locations. I covered the side vent with tape so that air would only enter through the front of the case. There are two benefits to this. It draws more air through the front of the case which makes my drives cooler and it ensures that the air entering my case is filtered which keeps it cleaner. Rather than remove the filter for cleaning I have found that using the hose attachment from my vacuum cleaner applied to the front face of the case does a wonderful job of removing any dust that accumulates on the filter. With this setup I have found that the inside of my case stays clean and cool. I see no reason why you could not do the same with a 902 case.

Just my 2 cents ... I find it a bit ironic that your board supports WOL but not S3.

Ahh, good thing I asked. I thought you meant that was the range to be expected with a cache drive installed. I'll have to do a test on my server and see how close I am to 400 mb/s.

Are you sure that you want to use all WD Black drives? They are not really going to be that much faster than WD Green drives. If you switched to 1 x WD10EARS and 2 x WD20EARS you'd save over $100 plus your operating cost would be lower. If you want better performance you'd be better off adding a cache drive. That would make a bigger difference than having all WD Black drives in the array.

Just to be clear, the unRAID speeds you've listed assume that you are using a cache drive, correct? If you're going to use a cache drive I see no reason at all to have a WD Black parity drive. The only question that remains is what drive to use for your cache drive. I've been surprised in that the real world performance differences between WD Green and Black drives are not as large as I had assumed them to be. My WD Green drives hold their own very well against my WD Black drive. My guess would be that you would see very little to no speed difference between a Green and Black cache drive. But you might notice the higher purchase price and operating cost that accompanies the Black drive. Also 1TB is pretty big for a cache drive. I think the rule of thumb is for your cache drive to be big enough to handle the largest amount of data you'd ever write to the array in a single day. So for you that sounds like 500GB but feel free to go bigger if you'd like. My suggestion would be to move your 500GB drive into your unRAID server and use it as a cache drive. It would save you the time of having to transfer files over to the server and if you're using a usb 2.0 enclosure now it would be faster than what you see now as well. With the cache you save by not purchasing a third drive you can now purchase 2 WD20EARS drives. Just make sure to get them from different sources and to install a jumper on pins 7-8 before using them. I (due to my OCD) also disable the head parking timer in my WD Green drives but this is optional.

All you've included in the attached file is the output summary. It's best to post your entire syslog because it will will give more insight into what was happening during the preclear process. Also there is an existing thread for these kind of questions. That thread is reviewed frequently by Joe L. (the author of the preclear script). You can access it here.